I have been using the Astronomik CLS Filter for the last few years to get rid of light pollution in my astrophotos. The filter has done a really good job so far and have given me some good results, specially when doing deep sky astrophotography. I was planning on modifying my Canon 6D for astrophotography, so it is more sensetive to H-alpha. But before I could completely modify my camera, i wanted to give some other astronomik filters a try. Specially the UHC Filter and 12nm Ha Filter as these filters only allow narrow wavelengths (specially the 12nm Halpha.) Below is a comparison for the CLS and UHC transmission chart. As you can see from the above images, UHC filter has a narrow transmission and thus gets rid of any unwanted light (City Lights) The result of shooting through the UHC filter is that you get a better sky contrast hence the name UHC (Ultra High Contrast), The UHC works better on any kind of emission nebula: When a nebula is emitting light only at certain wavelengths, you may block everything else to get a very dark background with a high contrast: That´s the intention of the Astronomik UHC. I […]
December 2014 has been a lucky month for all astrophotographers, as the comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) brightens up and makes a visit in the night sky. I recently purchased a new AT65ED Scope and an iOptron ZEQ25 so that I could spend my holiday in India capturing all the Northern Objects, but unfortunately had to leave them at airport due to baggage restrictions. I was disappointed when I saw all the amazing images from all over the world of the comet. I really wanted to take a shot of the same, as it would be my first ever comet capture. I looked up at my gear and realized i don’t really need fancy gear to capture the comet, i can try with the gear i have. So, finally on 29th December 2014, I headed out to the terrace of my apartment in Nagpur City and set up my gear. Pointed out my camera towards South at around 12:30 AM. At start it was really disappointed as i did not see anything apart from the stars i saw everyday. I was using Canon 50mm f/1.8 on Canon 6D and Tamron 70 – 300 on my Nikon D5100. It was probably because […]
